Chapter Text
That night felt like a gift.
They lay on the mattress, legs thrown over each other, fingers intertwined, until the warming charm expired, allowing the cool air into the tower.
Hermione expected awkwardness. That those post-coital moments would be fraught with tension. That he would insist on leaving her there alone. That he would reveal it was all just one big joke — from Theo’s manipulation to her orgasms.
Instead, Malfoy – Draco – kissed her.
He spoke in soft whispers that tickled her cheeks. He teased her, with his words, with his laugh, with his thumb stroking intention into the heartline of her palm.
There was a peek of dawn when they decided to head to their dorms, dressing in nervous glances and shy back-turning. And then he walked her to Gryffindor Tower, both silent as they reflected on the events of that early morning. With the Fat Lady sleeping in her portrait behind her, Draco kissed Hermione goodnight, lingering a mere breath from her lips as if dependent on her taste, like water and food to live.
She hardly slept before the rest of the dorm rose, but she felt wide awake – alive with a fulfilled appetite. There was a skip to her step. A brightening in her eyes. A rouge to her cheeks that matched the indentations from his fingers and his teeth all over her body.
Classes had been cancelled for seventh and eighth years to allow for N.E.W.T. study sessions, and Hermione couldn’t find the breath to complain when the other students took advantage of the free day and the Spring sun with it. She sought the bright and open air also, settling herself on a massive tree root near the Black Lake.
Bent over her journal, Hermione bit into her self-inking quill, tongue carefully tracing the grooves along the stem. Thinking, fantasising, analysing the sex from last night.
Already having imparted the details of the night before, she now struggled to summarise her results and findings.
It felt strange to try and connect the brief relationships with the past participants to such a special night with Draco. There were no words for comparison – no charts and graphs she could draw in order to make it beyond clear how she felt.
Her hypothesis had been simple enough – increase sexual education and increase sexual pleasure. Find the correlation between the two in order to advance to the next level of life, of adulthood, of womanhood.
Hermione studied her findings. The line graph representing her EPS score increased steadily as intimacy increased. Her attraction bars and affection dots mapped the intricacies of her sexual awakening, even as she struggled to understand all that had happened in the past few months.
Ginny had said Hermione would feel different , but she thought she was just being facetious.
She felt slightly sore in the best way. Her skin was sensitive to the warm sun and blades of grass. Despite a shower that morning, she still smelled his cologne on her and tasted him on her lips. She could still feel the press of his body on hers, the weight of him, hard and sturdy and heavy. The way in which his kiss pulled an invisible string from her abdomen. Her fingers trailed the hidden love bites and bruises he left her as commemoration prizes, passing over her glamoured forearm. She recalled how he had poured his apologies into her scarred flesh.
Hermione looked up, an echo of laughter catching her attention. With animated voices, Ginny and Pansy sunbathed on a nearby hill. The Hogwarts Castle rose in the background, sunlight glinting off the white-washed rock wall. Blaise sat with them, on the periphery, allowing their affection for one another to dominate the scene.
Their conversation came to a halt and Pansy leaned in to kiss Ginny, hands grasping the hips of Ginny’s Quidditch kit. From what Hermione gathered at Breakfast, Ginny had intended to run practice drills for her teammates throughout the day.
If Pansy Parkinson could get Ginny to cancel practice, Hermione knew things were getting serious.
She wondered what made two individuals compatible. Once upon a time, she would have said it had to do with interests, or friendships, or a mixture of nature versus nurture. But Hermione had witnessed the pull of two complete opposites in Ginny and Pansy, like positive and negative charges re-magnetized until they fit. Meanwhile, her own pull to Draco was like a current running to a magnetic field, as if her magical core was going home.
Although Hermione had delved into Muggle and biological research, there were still endless theorems to consider, especially in regards to magic. She made a note in her “Future Implications” section to study the correlation between soulmate bonds and chemical reactions.
In the discussion section, she attempted to piece together what it was about Malfoy that had sparked so much in her.
Hermione thought through the intimacies she had shared with him. They had come with a fault. A misplaced kiss at the Masquerade Ball. A close space as they hid from danger during Truth or Dare. Sensory overload after he discovered her journal and cornered her in the classroom.
Every single one of those moments had come with a burst of passion. Whether in the form of shock, anger, or desire, she had lost control.
A victim of emotional spontaneity, and yet, those had been moments most successful in her research. Because she had felt a crackling of energy. A stirring at the deepest pit of her abdomen. An attraction to settle the basest of needs.
She had needed to jump into the unknown, into the grey. She needed to just trust as she allowed herself to be led.
“Good morning, Granger.”
Looking away from her concentrated journal entry, she found Malfoy, polished and combed hair that contrasted the way his hair casually fell across his eyes the night prior.
Hermione’s gaze travelled his body. She didn’t know what she expected to find: dishevelled clothing, lip-gloss-stained lapels, bruises on his neck. The stain of her.
With a blush, she realised he was doing the same. Properly examining her bloated hair, frizzing in the rays. Taking in the knee-length skirt, pulled up to her thighs to enjoy the warmth. He tilted his head at her, a wink in his eye.
She startled. “Good morning.”
“May I join you?” he asked cooly, perusing the ground around her, littered with the pages of her journal and N.E.W.T. time tables.
“Malfoy, no. I mean! Yes, you can join me.” Hermione’s face flushed. She moved papers aside, clearing a space for him.
A smirk played on his lips as he sat down perpendicular to her, legs outstretched on the grass. “Malfoy? What happened to Draco?”
She gripped her quill a little tighter, remembering how she had cried his name out at the peak of her bliss. Hermione cleared her throat, channelling the courage she always had reserved for him. “Fine, Draco.”
Like flicking a light switch off, Draco released his cool expression. At the actual mention of his name, he looked almost bashful.
A cloud passed in the sky, angling the sun so that it hit Hermione’s cheek. Leaves floated with a breeze passing through them – small, budding, and green. Hermione could swear the pink flower by her foot was growing like magic. The seconds seemed to tick by without a word from either of them.
Boyish laughter sounded from nearby. Hermione looked up to find Ron, Dean, Seamus, and Neville passing. Ron’s eyes caught hers, then moved to the space beside her. His open grin fell centimetres by the second as he realised who she was sitting with.
Unable to release her gaze from Ron's reaction, Hermione felt her chest squeeze. Despite the reassurances he had given her during their talk, she wasn’t sure if that would be enough for him. A sliver of fear crept into her heart that he would stalk over to antagonise Draco, but then his expression softened. He turned, though retaining a look of shocked confusion, as the group walked past the area.
Finally, Hermione broke the silence. “Did you get back to your dorm alright?”
“Of course, Granger,” Draco scoffed, sounding just like the young, snot-nosed boy she had known, his eyes still on Ron, watching the group as they cleared the distance. He caught himself, blinking before correcting his tone. “You? – Were you okay last night?”
Hermione nodded, a blush raging across her cheeks. She had been more than just okay last night. He caught the smile with an upturn of his lips.
“Guess this means we should go on a proper date now.” He bit his lip as he looked down at her, and she felt a quiver run through her.
She caught the sight of Pansy and Ginny in the distance. “We could do a double date,” she said, nodding in their direction.
Draco looked around, caught sight of them and chuckled. Turning back to pay her the attention she craved, he teased, “knowing Blaise, he could get off on just hanging around the four of us.”
Hermione wrinkled her nose.
“So then, you’re okay with being seen with me?” he asked, and she looked up to find him sneering at the space Ron had just crossed.
She knew words would mean nothing. She would have felt the same. If it were her, she would want Draco to show her; show her that he wasn’t embarrassed of being seen with her.
Hermione leaned in, tipping her head back, and stared into his mercurial eyes. He hesitated for a moment’s breath before tilting his head left and covering her lips with his own. His thumb traced her jawline as he controlled the angles of her kiss with a hand wrapped around the nape of her neck. The kiss was innocent but grew headier, teeth suckling at the bottom of her lip, tongue meeting hers in mutual agreement, before she was pulling away.
“Draco?”
“Hmm?” he asked, bleary-eyed.
“You’re left-handed,” she said matter-of-factly.
He furrowed his brow. “Yes, that’s correct, Granger. Well-spotted.”
She shook her head. “You’re left-handed and, well, you kiss me by turning your head to the left also.” Draco looked down at his hands, as if trying to understand the magic of the implications. “Sorry, I was just – it’s part of the head directionality research I read a few months ago.”
“You and your research.” He grinned. Looking down, he nodded at the parchment in her hand. “And I suppose you’re jotting down our experiment from last night in there? Do tell me you’ve given me a high EPS score.”
Hermione smirked. “I was just writing my results and conclusion – connecting some dots, making recommendations for future studies.”
“Future studies?” His tone pitched in express interest.
Hermione nodded. “Yes, you see, this research study employed a limited set of participants. I can’t exclude the possibility that changes in the skills and knowledge – my own and of the previous participants – could be a confounding variable. I’ve seen EPS scores shift as my experience grows, which requires a replication of the study with these controls factored in.”
His jaw tensed, eyes hard and flinty. “You’re going to continue the study with other blokes?”
Even if she had anticipated his reaction, the transformation into a cold, biting tone was a shock to her systems. She felt a shiver run down her spine. Pushing through, she gave a nervous smile, willing her expression to realise her true intention. “Well, that’s just one option to continue the study, but I rather think the stronger study would have the controlled variable in the participant, not the test environments.”
Draco’s eyes brightened in cautious understanding. Hermione turned a page in her journal, flattening the spine, displaying the research study that would take up the remaining months of her time at Hogwarts. She passed the journal to Draco, and he took it with greedy intention in his eye.
“Ginny helped me with some of the terms,” Hermione said, voice trailing off.
A smirk spread across his expression as he read the words, and he looked up to lay stormy eyes on her. She shivered again for a very different reason.
The parchment read:
The To-Do List
- Cowgirl
- Spooning
- Doggy Style
- Reverse Cowgirl
- Standing Up
- Bath/Shower Sex